84 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



there is nowhere, so far as I can learn, any positive evidence 

 that it cannot descend if it would. In every case the rivers 

 are the outflow of large lakes which seem to be what the sea 

 is to the salt-water Salmon. 



It is a vexed question whether or not the species was known 

 in Maine before the erection of dams preventing the ascent 

 of the Salmon, which once were so numerous in that State; 

 there are no natural obstructions. In the Saguenay there are 

 no high falls, none of them are perpendicular, and the rapids, 

 though very strong, are by no means insuperable for Salmon, 

 and, with intervals of quiet water, extend only some forty 

 miles from tide-water. In New Brunswick the obstructions 

 are artificial, and have been made within the memory of man. 

 At Grand Lake, Nova Scotia, the communication with the sea 

 is direct by the Shubenacadic River, in its lower reaches, a 

 muddy, tidal stream. In other Nova Scotian localities, dams 

 may have cut off the connection. In the Stony Lake Chain 

 of Peterborough County, Ontario, there is rather a round- 

 about, but, on the whole, an unobstructed connection with 

 Lake Ontario, and thence directly with the sea by way of the 

 St. Lawrence. The rapids between Kingston and Montreal 

 could be run by without difficulty, but the journey from salt 

 water is a long one, and it is many years since a Salmon is 

 known to have been caught in the St. Lawfence or any of its 

 tributaries further up than the Jacques Cartier River, a few 

 miles above Quebec, and now the most westerly Salmon 

 stream in the Province. In Sweden the Trolhattan Falls, 

 five in number, with a total height of one hundred and twenty 

 feet, in a narrow gorge, are admittedly impassable for Salmon. 

 In British Columbia, the access to the Kootenai lakes is 

 obstructed by a heavy fall which may have been surmountable 

 at times; but Salmon may also have found their way into 

 these lakes, at periods of extraordinarily high water, through 

 the marshy belt, only two miles wide, which separates the 

 Kootenai River above the lakes from the Upper Columbia. 



